According to an article posted by Chatham House, a London-based independent policy institute, water infrastructure has been targeted by both sides in the conflict, leading to crippling disruptions in water supply over the last several months in cities such as Aleppo, Homs and Hama. The disabling of water treatment plants has led to a reported increase in waterborne diseases such as typhoid.

According to Chatham House researcher and fellow Nouar Shamout, the war has only worsened an already complicated and precarious water situation. ISIS, the Islamist rebel group that has seized control of many parts of Syria and northern Iraq, controls key parts of the water infrastructure in the regionally crucial Euphrates River system, including Al-Raqqa dam, which supplies one-fifth of Syria’s electricity and controls irrigation flows downstream.

The federal government is filled with terrorists who rival ISIS in their nefariousness and who are unrivaled in their power and influence. They’re just more subtle about it. What’s that I’ve heard about “enemies foreign and domestic?”

Congress is being urged to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade plan even though most have not read it, and a leading gun-rights activist says the plan could give President Obama the power to limit the importation of ammunition and implement his political agenda in many different ways.

“Fast track authority in the context of this treaty means a blank check,” said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt.

“By a majority vote, the Congress is preparing to give the president authorization to negotiate a treaty. When he brings it back, it would take two thirds of the Senate to vote it down because of the way they set up the parliamentary system,” Pratt told WND.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, debate is made even more bizarre by the intense secrecy surrounding the proposed treaty. A Politico article described the hoops lawmakers must jump through just to see the bill.

“If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door,” stated the article by Edward-Isaac Dovere.

“If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving,” Dovere continued. “And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.”

Pratt is appalled that the public is getting no chance to weigh in on TPP.

“This is incredible. This is the administration that advertised itself as the most transparent that there ever would be. Give me a break. This is really going to the other extreme. Where is the objection just on procedure, let alone any of the details,” said Pratt.

If the terms of TPP are under lock and key, how does Pratt know that Obama is poised to restrict ammunition imports?

“I don’t know that it’s there. I’m just assuming that a guy that’s done everything he can heretofore with his pen, as he said he would do, will do it again when he’s given a blank check,” said Pratt, who says Second Amendment defenders aren’t the only ones who should be worried.

“It’s not just guns. We could be talking about any number of other subjects where the president could just go hog wild,” he said. “For people who say, ‘Just because you haven’t seen the treaty, why are you objecting?’ Wait a minute, the only time anybody will be able to see the treaty is when it’s too late to do anything.”

In government, secrecy is the enemy of honesty and righteous rule. That’s why this administration has been so loath to tell anyone anything about what it’s doing.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that this administration has actually been a good thing for America, albeit painful. Heretofore, we only thought of the democrats as the gun grabbers, collectivists and advocates of socialized medicine, and big government control freaks.

But this administration has forced the GOP to tell the world what it’s all about. So for instance, Senators like John Thune (and many others) who voted to confirm Loretta Lynch have told us that they think just like the democrats. Anyone who enables this president to press his ill-conceived ideas on America is a traitor, and that includes GOP and democrats alike. And they deserve to be treated as traitors.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives posted a proposed rule change Friday removing a previous exemption and banning the manufacture, import and sale of “5.56 mm (.223) SS109 and M855 ‘green tip’ ammunition containing a steel core,” saying it now considers it to be “non-sporting” handgun ammunition capable of penetrating protective vests worn by law enforcement officers. This latest development, ceding to law enforcement lobby interests, is prompted by the development of handguns capable of firing the cited ammunition.

[ … ]

“This ‘sporting use’ strategy was used before,” author and attorney Richard Stevens documented. “The Nazi Weapons Law (18 March 1938) forbade importation of weapons under substantially the same test.” Additionally, the intent of founders in drafting the Second Amendment makes no such exception to allow “sporting purpose” infringements, particularly by the federal government.

Read all of David’s well-sourced article. Steel tip (aka “green tip”) ammunition is designed a little heavier for slightly different flight and terminal ballistics and better penetration at long distances. There are a host of reasons someone might want to have this ammunition, not all of which have to do with so-called sporting purposes according to the ATF. Then again, my definition of sporting purposes and the ATF’s definition of sporting purposes differ by a wide margin.

The Sporting Purposes test should be found unconstitutional since the second amendment pertains to the amelioration of tyranny rather than hunting. The ATF has crafted a regulatory framework that contradicts and violates the intent of the founding fathers. Therefore, everyone who works for the ATF is undermining the constitution.

On a personal note, I would like to thank Eric Holder for reminding me that it’s important to keep track of the good bargains in my area of operations.

450 rounds of M855 “green tip,” 30 cents per round – ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

As for Holder and the lawyers at ATF who have crafted such statist regulations, and the Golgothan for whom they all work, you will see your maker soon enough and then answer for your sins.

When it comes to private contractors, there is room for private contractors to work in the mess hall providing basic supplies and doing some logistical work that might have been done in-house in the past. I am troubled by the use of private contractors when it comes to potential armed engagements.

I think it puts our troops in harm’s way. I think it creates some difficult morale issues when you’ve got private contractors getting paid 10 times what an Army private’s getting paid for work that carries similar risks.

When it comes to our special forces, what we’ve seen is that it’s a potential drain of some of our best-trained special forces, and you can’t blame them if they can make so much more working for Blackwater than they can working as a master sergeant. That, I think is a problem.

[I]f… you start making decisions on armed engagement based on the availability of private contractors to fill holes and gaps that over time you are, I believe, eroding the core of our military’s relationship to the nation and how accountability is structured. I think you are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation-state apart, which is a monopoly on violence. And to set those kinds of precedents, I think, will lead us over the long term into some troubled waters.

Wary of putting combat troops in Iraq, the U.S. government is gauging contractors’ interest in advising the Iraqi Defense Ministry and Counter Terrorism Service in a range of capacities, including force development, logistics and planning and operations.

The U.S. Army Contracting Command posted a notice last month seeking contractors willing to work on an initial 12-month contract, who should be “cognizant of the goals of reducing tensions between Arabs and Kurds, and Sunni and Shias.”

Those services “fall within the existing mission” of the Office of Security Assistance-Iraq, “which is to help build institutional capacity of Iraq’s security ministries,” Defense Department spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said in an email.

The rapid advance of Islamic State militants in Iraq in recent months has spurred the deployment of almost 1,000 American troops to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities in Iraq’s capital Baghdad and the northern city of Irbil, in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

Nearly 100 additional servicemembers are there as advisers with the Office of Security Assistance–Iraq, and civilian advisers may not be far behind.

Analysts say hiring contractors is a way to avoid deploying such forces.

David Johnson, a former Army lieutenant colonel who is executive director of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, said contractors aren’t considered “boots on the ground” in conflict zones.

“The government always seeks to minimize boots on the ground to reduce domestic political risk,” he said in an email. “The American people and media do not consider a paid contractor to represent them in the same way that they do a soldier.”

It rings hollow to say that this isn’t a combat mission and the contractors will be in no danger. If that was true, there would be no objection to sending Special Forces to do the training and act as a stopgap (this is a perfect mission for the U.S. Special Forces, or Green Beret, not Special Operations).

But if I was a contractor in Iraq now given the tepid support I sense from Washington, I would make sure I had means of evasion, escape, egress and evacuation.

Obama: “I hated military contractors then, but now I love them.” Because Obama is a perpetual and incorrigible liar.

Hoping to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico, according to a draft of the proposal.

Of course, this has nothing whatsoever to do with “stemming the recent surge,” which was and is well-orchestrated by the administration.

Via WRSA, watch the following video, which is well worth the time. None of this is a surprise to me or my readers.

PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO EMBED THIS VIDEO CONDITIONED UPON INCLUSION OF THE FOLLOWING WRITTEN ATTRIBUTION:

Video courtesy of Little Bonanza Productions.

For more information, please contact: lisa@littlebonanzaproductions.com

In Murrieta, over the last few months, over 500 illegal aliens a week are being released into the general population, many of these people are children, without a medical screening. Last weekend that number changed to 200 every 72 hours. They are being shipped in from other areas around the country to our holding facility, where they do not have the room to house these people, much less give them a proper processing above checking to see if these invaders are known criminals.

Murrieta Border Patrol agents are testing positive for Tuberculosis. Hand and Foot Disease, and Chagos, both previously eradicated from the area, are on the rise. We are being hit by sickness, and we are told that as we are exposed to these infectious diseases, if we reject allowing these diseased people into our population, we are nothing more than a bunch of racists.

Other diseases to emerge, especially among Border Patrol agents, is H1N1 (“swine”) flu, and chicken pox. It is anticipated that also coming are diseases like dengue and Ebola virus, when one considers these incoming illegal aliens are from Central and South America, the Middle East and West Africa.

A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.

In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.

“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”

The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.

The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”

“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”

She said the workers were stripped of their cellphones and other communication devices. Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired.

A former nurse at the camp told me she was horrified by what she saw.

“We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness – all this stuff coming into the country,” she said. “We were very concerned at one point about strep going around the base.”

Both the counselor and the nurse said their superiors tried to cover up the extent of the illnesses.

“When they found out the kids had scabies, the charge nurse was adamant – ‘Don’t mention that. Don’t say scabies,’” the nurse recounted. “But everybody knew they had scabies. Some of the workers were very concerned about touching things and picking things up. They asked if they should be concerned, but they were told don’t worry about it.”

The nurse said the lice issue was epidemic – but everything was kept “hush-hush.”

“You could see the bugs crawling through their hair,” she said. “After we would rinse out their hair, the sink would be loaded with black bugs.”

The nurse told me she became especially alarmed because their files indicated the children had been transported to Lackland on domestic charter buses and airplanes.

“That’s what alerted me,” she said. “Oh, my God. They’re flying these kids around. Nobody knows that these children have scabies and lice. To tell you the truth, there’s no way to control it.”

Welcome to the beginnings of dystopia Amerika. It’s all intentional – don’t doubt it for a minute. And it’s going to get worse. Much worse. And then even worse.

“And it happens now once a week,” Obama added. “And it’s a one-day story. There’s no place else like this.”

[ … ]

His “biggest frustration” as president, Obama said, has been that “this society has not been willing to take some basic steps” to keep guns away from people who “can do just unbelievable damage.”

The president again criticized Congress for blocking a proposal to expand background checks for gun buyers and said too many lawmakers are “terrified” of the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups.

While “our levels of gun violence are off the charts,” Obama said, the American people themselves have to demand new laws: “If public opinion does not demand change in Congress, it will not change.”

Opponents of various gun control proposals said they would be ineffective, and some threaten Second Amendment ownership rights. They also said shootings are a mental health issue, an argument that Obama disputed.

“The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people,” Obama said.

We’ve discussed this before at length, how the mentally ill are no more prone to violence than those who are not mentally ill, and how crime is a moral choice. Again, those killings where idiot commentators talk about how “crazy” or “mentally ill” a person is are pointers to evil, not sickness.

Obama either knows better or actually believes that there is no such thing as evil except as created by society. He is a liar, but in purveying his lie, he managed to lump mentally ill people, most of whom are peaceable, loving folk, into the same category as mass killers.

As a reminder to all those who were in the sandbox doing the bidding of the country, do not ever allow yourself to be diagnosed as PTSD. And this goes for any reader anywhere, not just Soldiers and Marines. Do not be lumped into the category of mentally ill. You’ll never get off the list.

But in spite of his stupid insult to the mentally ill, there is (in the words of C. S. Lewis), a deeper magic that we who are watchers and learners know. The witch Obama couldn’t care less about mass shootings, or crime in Chicago, or anything of the sort. He wants to confiscate guns because he is a totalitarian. Totalitarians must destroy the will and ability to resist.

The United States is reviving a law enforcement group to investigate those it designates as domestic terrorists, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Following hate-motivated shootings such as the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence about such criminals on a national level, Justice Department officials said.

The Department of Justice will reconstitute a task force that was originally formed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but dissolved after the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks as law enforcement agencies focused on threats from militants abroad.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that the United States remains concerned about threats from Islamic extremists, but the group will focus on other motives for attacks within U.S. borders.

Events like the April 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, in which the attackers appeared to be influenced by extremists abroad, would not fall under the jurisdiction of the group, named the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee.

“We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice,” Holder said.

The official statement is here. As usual with Holder, there is disinformation being purveyed. See for instance this LA Times article:

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder, Jr. on Monday announced the creation of a task force within the Justice Department to combat an “escalating danger” from “homegrown” terrorists within the United States.

The Justice Department, in a news release accompanying Holder’s weekly video address, cited a Congressional Research Service report last year that said domestic terrorists were responsible for more than two dozen incidents in the U.S. since 9/11.

Holder, in the video, cited the Boston Marathon bombings last year and shootings at Fort Hood in 2009 and 2014 as examples of “the danger we face from these homegrown threats.”

The use of the phrase “domestic terrorists” and Chechen brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev is a misdirect. Another source, The Guardian, has a report agreeing with the first one.

The group will coordinate cases that involve Americans who may be spurred to violence for political or prejudicial reasons.

It will include representatives of the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, which includes representatives of federal prosecutors.

Then Attorney General Janet Reno first established such a task force following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, but it was dismantled after the September 11, 2001 hijacked-plane attacks as the agencies turned their attention toward threats from abroad.

US Attorney General Eric Holder signed a memorandum last month reconstituting the group and will announce the details on Tuesday, one official said.

Events like the April 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, in which the attackers appeared to be influenced by extremist groups abroad, would not fall under the committee’s jurisdiction.

Islamists, terrorists, and international threats aren’t the focus of this group. You get one guess as to Holder’s target. Post guesses in the comments.

The 8 News NOW I-Team has learned that FBI agents have started an investigation into the events surrounding a potentially deadly showdown one month ago surrounding rancher Cliven Bundy.

It is one thing for Cliven Bundy and his supporters to square off against an assortment of Bureau of Land Management employees. It is quite another when the FBI enters the picture, and that is exactly what has happened.

The I-Team has confirmed that FBI agents have launched a formal investigation into alleged death threats, intimidation and possible weapons violations that culminated with a dangerous showdown on April 12, and the first people to be interviewed by FBI agents are Metro Police, starting with Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillispie.

Federal employees suspended their roundup of Cliven Bundy’s cattle, following a confrontation outside the BLM compound near Bunkerville. At the urging of Metro Police, Bundy’s cattle were released, but BLM’s new director announced the matter wasn’t over and would be resolved, one way or another.

Last week, the I-Team talked with Metro officers who intervened to protect the lives of federal employees from the 400 or so Bundy supporters and armed militia members. Officers told the I-Team they feared for their lives that day because of the assembled firepower, and because many in the crowd had pointed weapons at officers, taunted them, told them they should be ready to die.

I don’t know about the details at the last of the report I cited, but it’s important that this issue be gotten right. My readers know my views. I believe that the federal government has two legitimate functions: (1) the common defense, and (2) building (only) the necessary roads and bridges to enable interstate commerce. Beyond this, everything is unconstitutional and not approved by the wise founders.

But there is an audience who doesn’t think like me. If the FBI is successful, some men may stand before a “jury of peers” for pointing weapons at BLM agents. Since many juries are nothing more than a collection of imbeciles pooling their ignorance, discussions of the constitutional provisions or lack thereof for what the BLM did is a bridge too far. Lives are at stake, and thus a simple and compelling argument needs to be pressed.

There is also an equally simple and compelling legal argument for pointing weapons at BLM agents. The irony is that it was given to us by the Supreme Court of the U.S., that other collection of imbeciles in Washington. In Tennessee vesus Garner, we learned that even the Supreme Court believes that certain uses of firearms by LEOs is immoral. Guns can only be used by law enforcement officers for the exact same reason that they may be used by civilians, i.e., for self defense.

This doesn’t mean that LEOs across America actually abide by Tennessee v. Garner, or that courts uphold the constitution. But it does mean that right is on our side. It is the BLM who came in pointing weapons at men, women and children. If they are going to do this, it is not an unreasonable thing to expect that overwatch and security would point weapons back at the perpetrators to ensure their own safety.

There are those who may say that Cliven Bundy was a criminal, and some jurors might be in that very pool. I disagree, but that’s not the point. The men, women and children who were there were engaged in peaceful protests, and nothing more. The objection rings hollow.

When the conversations get complicated, when the lawyers cite regulation until the faces of jurors are confused, when the media is perplexed or going along with the administration talking points, and when perhaps even your own folk become disillisioned and confused, we need to keep pressing this simple, compelling, morally upstanding position. Weapons were pointed at BLM agents because the men there had to protect the lives of the people under their charge. God approves, and even the stolid Supreme Court has recognized this fundamental right.

No backing up, no surrender, no losing focus on the point. Say it again and again, indefatigable as it were, and without rest for your opponents. The legal defense doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that. We (and the lawyers defending these men) just need to be disciplined enough to pull it off.

The director of the Federal Air Marshal Service is resigning after being investigated for his role in an alleged operation to acquire guns for officials’ personal use, FoxNews.com has learned.

Director Robert Bray’s home was raided in December in connection with the ongoing probe. Law enforcement and congressional sources told FoxNews.com that Bray’s recently announced resignation, which is effective in June, is directly related to the investigation.

Bray allegedly is among several officials who were obtaining weapons through this operation.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general probe — which also is believed to involve the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — stems from whistleblower accusations involving federal Air Marshal supervisor Danny Poulos.

He is accused of using the agency’s federal firearms license and his relationship with gun manufacturer Sig Sauer to obtain discounted and free guns. He then provided them to high-up agency officials for their personal use, according to whistleblower documents obtained by FoxNews.com and interviews with multiple officials with knowledge of the ongoing probe.

Let’s see: avoiding form 4473 for his friends (check), using influence and power for personal gain using tax dollars (check), potential bribery to obtain government contracts (check), cronyism and corruption (check).

Because laws are for little people.

Just another crook in a position of power. Are there any honest, hard working people in the Obama administration … anywhere?